Articles
I am a contributing editor at Scientific American and write the Brain Waves blog for Psychology Today (you can find those posts here). My work has also appeared in The Atlantic, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, Vogue and many other publications. Earlier in my career, I was on staff at Newsweek, and People, among other places and I’ve included a few of my old favorites from those days.
Raising a Deaf Child Makes the World Sound Different
When I found out my son couldn’t hear, I figured out I wasn’t really listening, either
Just before my youngest son Alex turned two, we discovered that he had significant hearing loss that was likely to get worse. A few weeks later, I found myself in the gym at the school my two older boys attended. I was there for the regular Friday morning assembly. I’d…
The Neurobiology of Dr. Seuss
Babies’ brains crave repetition, rhythm, and rhyme
Did you like green eggs and ham? Did you wish the cat in the hat would come to play at your house? Whether or not you loved hearing the spritely sentences of those stories as a child, your brain lapped them up-and children’s brains continue to do so half a…
A Blind Man Sees with Technology . . . and Practice
How brain training might help recipients of retinal implants
At the age of fourteen, Roger Pontz was diagnosed with a degenerative condition called retinitis pigmentosa. For the next forty years, his eyesight grew progressively worse until he was completely blind in his early forties. But he’s not anymore. In January, Pontz, now 55, became the second American to receive…
The Regenerating Brain
Stem Cell Therapy Is Emerging As a Promising Treatment for Parkinson’s Disease
Science Gave My Son the Gift of Sound
Cochlear implants have been controversial in Deaf culture – how would one change my son?
On a cold January night, I was making dinner while my three boys played in and around the kitchen. I heard my husband Mark’s key in the lock. Jake and Matthew, my two older sons, tore down the long, narrow hall toward the door. “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” they cried…
The Importance of Connections
What a map of a mouse brain has to do with your kids
Last week, a team of researchers from the Allen Institute for Brain Science published the first comprehensive map showing how the 75 million neurons in the brain of a mouse are wired together. It was a major advance for neuroscience, but I felt the significance closer to home and immediately…